Guantánamo Navy base weathers Hurricane Matthew

The U.S. Navy base at Guantánamo Bay weathered Hurricane Matthew with minimal damage and no loss of life, the military said. Power was fully restored across the 45-square-mile base by 8 a.m. Wednesday, it was producing its own water and the Navy cafeteria fed sailors by noon.

Spokesman had no specific information on the damage, beyond debris and water in the road and ferry landings and damage to the beaches that are popular spots for scuba diving, swimming and barbecuing when troops are off duty.

At the prison, spokesman Navy Capt. John Filostrat said commanders chose to leave low-value detainees in the Camp 6 prison building, but would not say what the military did with 15 former CIA captives in a secret prison called Camp 7 that in the past had structural problems.

But Filostrat did say there was no meaningful damage to the Camp Justice compound, which was evacuated for the storm. The alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks and four accused accomplices, now held in Camp 7, are due at the war court Monday, and Filostrat said Wednesday afternoon that prison staff members “plan on supporting [military] commissions next week as scheduled.” The Pentagon has scheduled an aircraft loaded with more than 100 participants to depart Andrews Air Force base on Saturday for the week of pretrial hearings.

At the base, it was not known when the commander, Navy Capt. David Culpeper, would authorize the return of some 700 family members, mostly spouses and children, who were evacuated on Sunday to “safe haven” in the Florida Panhandle.

The airlift is the first known evacuation of so-called “non-essential” residents from the base since September 1994, when the military airlifted 2,200 family members and civilians from the base. At the time, the outpost was overwhelmed by about 45,000 Haitian and Cuban migrants who were intercepted at sea while trying to reach the United States, stretching resources at the outpost that makes its own electricity and desalinates its own water — like a ship at sea.

“Family members were authorized to return in October 1995, marking an end to family separations,” according to a Navy account of the Operation Sea Signal evacuation. An earlier evacuation also took families from the base to Norfolk, by military supply ships, in the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The base last took a significant hit during Hurricane Sandy in 2012 when the storm tore up the war court compound called Camp Justice, ripped boats from their berths and washed away the docks used by the ferries that connect Leeward and Windward sides of the base across Guantánamo Bay.

This story was originally published October 5, 2016 at 6:08 PM with the headline "Guantánamo Navy base weathers Hurricane Matthew."